Researchers report promising outcomes from a clinical trial with patients with a rare form of bone marrow failure who received a hematopoietic stem cell transplant after pre-treatment with immunosuppressive drugs only. This is the first trial reporting successful transplant in dyskeratosis congenita (DC) patients without the use of any radiation or conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy beforehand.

In a major advance in the care of patients with leukemia and other blood disorders, physicians at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center have begun using Rapid Heme Panel, a high-tech genetic test that provides, within a matter of days, an unprecedented amount of critical information to aid the choice of treatment.

A common, sometimes severe viral disease in patients receiving a transplant of donated stem cells can be prevented by a new drug given shortly after transplant, according to a study led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital researchers.

Dana-Farber researchers found that an experimental drug combination for preventing graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) was not significantly better than the standard regimen of care, but that the new combination could provide an alternative that could be preferable in certain scenarios.

Dana-Farber researchers have developed a method for determining how ready acute myeloid leukemia cells are to die, a finding that may enable oncologists to choose more effective treatments for their patients.